The present invention relates to a printer driver, a printing control method, and a data storage medium. More particularly, the invention relates to a data storage medium, printing control method, and printer driver having means for controlling printing one or multiple print documents printed in page units based on plural combinations of printing paper feeding and paper cutting operations.
The hardware resources (referred to below as simply xe2x80x9cresourcesxe2x80x9d) shared by various application programs in data processing devices such as computers are conventionally centrally controlled and managed by the operating system. A driver written in software corresponds to each resource and can operate as a device (driver) for managing the resource by running the driver program on the data processing device.
For example, a printer is one such resource and an application program running on the data processing device uses the printer to print by means of a procedure such as follows.
(1) The application program sends a print request containing information about the print document to be printed to the operating system. More specifically, it specifies parameters such as the address in memory where the print document data is stored and the amount of data stored, and invokes a system call to the operating system.
(2) The operating system invokes a service routine provided by the printer driver, passing the print document data parameters to the service routine.
(3) The printer driver service routine presents the current printer settings on a display connected to the data processing device, for example, for confirmation by the user. The printer settings typically enable specifying the paper size and orientation, for example.
(4) Once the settings are confirmed, the service routine generates a print command for the printer from the print document data and printer settings, and sends the print command to the printer.
The printer driver thus functions to relay print settings for the printer and commands from the application program for printing to the printer. The printer driver therefore functions as a control part performing said function as a result of the program requesting said function.
By incorporating the printer driver program into the computer or other data processing device, the data processing device functions as a printer driver device.
Printers built into or used in conjunction with POS terminals, ATM terminals, and kiosk terminals include printers that use rolls of paper. A transport mechanism (transport unit) for advancing the paper to create blank space on the paper, and a cutter mechanism (paper cutting unit) for cutting the roll of paper to a desired length, are built in to this type of printer using roll paper.
However, printer setting requests for paper feeding and paper cutting, to a printer that uses a roll of paper, are handled separately by the application program selecting the printer driver performing a desired function from among multiple printer drivers having different functions for paper feeding and paper cutting. For example, if the paper orientation is set to xe2x80x9cportrait,xe2x80x9d there are two types of printer drivers, a printer driver written to advance the paper to create blank space after the printed part of the page on which the print document is printed and then cut the paper after advancing it, and a printer driver written to advance the paper to create blank space after the printed part of the page on which the print document is printed without then cutting the paper.
If two types of printer drivers such as described above are built into the POS terminal, ATM terminal, or kiosk terminal, one of the printer drivers must be selected when creating the application program and the application program then written to match the selected printer driver; when one type of printer driver is selected and only the selected printer driver is built into the data processing device, the application program must be written to match the included printer driver. The problem, therefore, is that the application program must be separately developed for each printer driver.
A further problem is that when print documents are printed in page units of a specified paper size, paper feeding and paper cutting are always performed to create blank space after the printed part of the page, and it is therefore not possible to print report style print documents, such as a daily sales report, having an indefinite page length.
The present invention is therefore directed to a solution for the above problems and an object of the invention is to provide a printer driver, printing control method, and data storage medium having means for controlling printing one or multiple print documents printed in page units where a particular paper size is one page based on plural combinations of print paper feeding and paper cutting operations when printing a print document for which there is a print request from an application program.
The inventors have extensively researched solutions for the above described problems. As a result we found that an application program can be written without considering the printer driver by controlling paper advancement for each page of the print document and controlling paper advancement for the print document, controlling whether or not to cut the print paper after advancing the page, and controlling printing in page units of the one or plural print documents based on plural combinations of paper feeding and paper cutting operations when printing one or plural print documents for which a print request is received from an application program. In other words, we proved that regardless of the application program used, printer settings can be made by means of the common interface printer driver.
Furthermore, we also proved that print documents in a report format for which the paper length is indefinite, such as daily sales reports, can also be printed.
The present invention based on these research results is described below.
A printer driver according to the present invention is characterized by comprising a page interval control means for controlling printing one or multiple print documents printed by page unit where a specific paper size is one page based on plural combinations of print paper feeding and cutting.
The page interval control means is further characterized by comprising a paper feed control means for controlling paper feeding by each page of the printed one or plural print documents and controlling paper feeding by each document of the print documents; and a paper cutting control means for controlling cutting the print paper.
The paper feed control means in this case is characterized by advancing the paper at each page of the one or plural print documents, or by advancing the paper at each document of the one or plural print documents.
Further preferably in this case the paper cutting control means controls whether or not to cut the print paper after a paper feed.
A printer driver according to the present invention is further characterized by further comprising: (a) a print request receiving means for receiving a print request containing print document data from an application program; (b) a settings data display control means for selecting and displaying printer settings data according to a print request received by the print request receiving means; (c) an input control means for controlling inputting specific information for printing the print document; (d) a print data generating means for generating print data based on the printer settings and said specific information for printing the print document; and (e) a transmission means for sending the print data and print output command to a printer.
In this case the settings data display control means is characterized by displaying the plural combinations of print paper feeding and cutting controlled by the page interval control means.
Yet further preferably in this case the input control means is characterized by selecting a paper orientation specifying whether an indefinite length direction of the paper is printed as the document length or printed as the document width. In addition, the input control means is characterized by selecting a desired combination from the plural combinations of print paper feeding and cutting controlled by the page interval control means.
A printing control method according to the present invention is characterized by comprising a page interval control step for controlling printing one or multiple print documents printed by page unit where a specific paper size is one page based on plural combinations of print paper feeding and cutting.
The page interval control step is further characterized by comprising a paper feed control step for controlling paper feeding by each page of the printed one or plural print documents and controlling paper feeding by each document of the print documents; and a paper cutting control step for controlling cutting the print paper.
In this case the paper feed control step is characterized by advancing the paper at each page of the one or plural print documents, or by advancing the paper at each document of the one or plural print documents.
Yet further preferably in this case the paper cutting control step controls whether or not to cut the print paper after a paper feed.
The printing control method is further characterized by further comprising: (a) a print request receiving step for receiving a print request containing print document data from an application program; (b)a settings data display control step for selecting and displaying printer settings data according to a print request received by the print request receiving step; (c) an input control step for controlling inputting specific information for printing the print document; (d) a print data generating step for generating print data based on the printer settings and said specific information for printing the print document; and (e) a transmission step for sending the print data and print output command to a printer.
In this case the settings data display control step is characterized by displaying the plural combinations of print paper feeding and cutting controlled by the page interval control step.
Yet further preferably, the input control step is characterized by selecting a paper orientation specifying whether an indefinite length direction of the paper is printed as the document length or printed as the document width. In addition, the input control step is characterized by selecting a desired combination from the plural combinations of print paper feeding and cutting controlled by the page interval control step.
A data storage medium according to the present invention is a data storage medium recording a program of the above printing control method. The data storage medium can be a Compact Disc, floppy disk, hard disk, magneto-optical disc, Digital Video Disc, semiconductor memory, or magnetic tape.